The Orange Cafe was the streets of Calcutta after the Moonrise Kindgom press conference so I retreated to the American Pavillion...mistake. After 90 minutes the wifi crapped out right in the middle of two video uploads and now it's slower than molasses in February, even for no-big-deal JPEG uploads. I really hate this.

So now I have to start all over again but there's no point because it's 3:20 pm and I have catch Laurent Bozereau's Roman Polanski doc at 4 pm, and it's playing the Salle Bazin which always means lines.

Here are are my Moonlight Kingdom tweets, at least:

Sony announced yesterday that they've hired Aaron Sorkin to adapt Walter Isaacson's biography of the late Steve Jobs for a feature to be produced by Scott Rudin, Mark Gordon and Guymon Casady. In so doing they're declaring that they don't expect that the Ashton Kutcher biopic to really get it or do it. They expect their film to be the definitive screen version, and with Sorkin writing it...most likely.

I probably would have bought the Bluray of Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret (Fox Home Video, 7.10) for its own sake, but now it's really essential with the 186-minute cut included with the 150-minute theatrical version. Which I want to see with as fresh an attitude as I can muster. The longer one, I mean.

Will Margaret's 186-minute cut acquire the status that Leone's full-length cut of Once Upon A Time in America has? (Not to be confused with the four-hour-plus version that will show in Cannes in a few days' time.)

The big news is that MCN's David Poland is here this year...not a rumor! Another big story is that there are two market screenings of Jeff Nichols' Mud this week (tomorrow at 2 pm and on Friday at 6 pm), which I'd love to quietly attend and hold my reactions until the official Cannes screen date on Saturday, 5.26, but the Wearefilmnation guys keep telling me "nope, sorry, we can't." And of course the journos all got together this evening at La Pizza, but that happens ever year...meh.

Tuesday, 5.15, 8:35 pm.

There's a Rise of the...Read More

My Dusseldorf-from-Berlin plane touched down in Nice at 1:50 pm. 45 minutes to retrieve bag from carousel. 25 minutes waiting for and then loading onto the bus. Bus left Nice Airport 40 minutes ago and we're currently slogging through traffic -- another 5 or 10 minutes. 110 minutes, all in. Not awful...okay, it 's fine.

Update: Waited 25 minutes to get into pass-dispensing portion of the Pslais only to be told at the gate that no bags are allowed inside, and that I'd have to lug my gear back to the Place Maritime and leave them there. Par for the French course.

My Berlin-to-Nice plane (by way of Dusseldorf) leaves in a half-hour or so. I'm due to arrive at 1:45 pm. Then comes the sluggish ground transportation to Cannes. And then the press badge pickup and dropping off the bags and whatnot. And then the 7:30 pm gathering at La Pizza. So not much filing until later tonight. Maybe some photos around dinner hour.

Let me get this straight: Alfonso Cuaron's allegedly groundbreaking Gravity, an IMAX-filmed 3D space drama that wrapped principal photography roughly eight months ago, won't open later this year but sometime in 2013 because of competition for IMAX screens from Skyfall and The Hobbit and one or two others?

That sounds to me like 2001: A Space Odyssey being bumped out its April 1968 release slot because of competition for screens from Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang or...you know, something of that calibre.

The vision of Alfonso Cuaron doesn't make way for safe audience-pleasing franchise films from Sam Mendes or Peter Jackson...c'mon. Especially with George...Read More

Variety's Andrew Stewart is reporting that Alan Rickman has landed what sounds to be his first truly decent role in years...maybe...as downtown Manhattan showman Hilly Kristal in CBGB, which Randall Miller (Bottle Shock) will direct from a script by Miller and Jody Slavin.

Playing a guy like Kristal will allow Rickman to go all madman and ticky and impassioned and tough at the same time...if the script is any good. My concern is that I saw Bottle Shock two or three years ago at Sundance and I didn't exactly levitate.

I was a half-hearted CGBG attender in the mid...Read More

I have to get hold of the first two or three episodes of The Newsroom (HBO, debuting 6.24) as soon as possible because this looks so effing great I can't stand it. The three trailers indicate this is the new Network. Creator-producer-writer Aaron Sorkin gets to say everything he thinks under the cover or guise of televised drama, and therefore: "We were not attacked by Muslims -- we were attacked by sociopaths."

The Blues Brothers was about John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd riffing on the white-guys-playing-the-Chicago-blues concept, which was originally personified with utter sincerity by the scowling, grittily-posed, Rayban-wearing Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The Blues Brothers were nervy and funny when I first saw them perform on Saturday Night Live in April 1978, and they doubled down on that when I saw them live at Carnegie Hall later that year (or was it '79?). But the coolness went all to hell with the release of John Landis's The Blues Brothers ('80).

What was it about The...Read More

TEN LIKELIEST BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: 1. Lincoln (mid to late December), d: Steven Spielberg; 2. The Master, d: Paul Thomas Anderson; 3. The Great Gatsby (12.25), d: Baz Luhrman, 4. This is Forty (12.21), d: Judd Apatow; 5. The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21), d: David O. Russell; 6. Gravity (11.21), d: Alfonso Cuaron; 7. Les Miserables (12.7), d: Tom Hooper; 8. Anna Karenina (November/early December), d: Joe Wright; 9. Zero Dark Thirty (12.14), d: Kathryn Bigelow; 10. Hyde Park on Hudson, d: Roger Michell. Wild Card: Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis.

Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams in Terrence Malick's The Burial, expected to be finished and released sometime between now and fall 2014.

Spring-Summer Distinction/Refinement: The Dark Knight Rises (HE), d: Christopher Nolan, cast: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Gary Oldman; Prometheus (HE), d: Ridley Scott, cast: Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Patrick Wilson, Idris Elba; Moonrise Kingdom(HE), d: Wes Anderson, cast: Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel; Take This Waltz, d: Sarah Polley, cast: Michelle Williams Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby. (4)

2011 Holdovers, Winter-Spring Escapees: Wettest County, d: John Hillcoat, cast: Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf; 360 (d: Fernando Meirelles), cast: Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Foster, Jude Law; Deep Blue Sea, d: Terence Davies, cast: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale; The Eye of the Storm, d: Fred Schepisi, cast: Charlotte Rampling, Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis; Salmon Fishing in Yemen; d: Lasse Hallstrom, cast: Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Kristin Scott Thomas; On The Road, d: Walter Salles, cast: Sam Riley, Garret Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Sturridge, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams. (6)

Quality-Level Genre Stabs: Cogan's Trade (HE), d/w: Andrew Dominik, cast: Brad Pitt, Scott McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn; Seven Psychopaths (HE), d/w: Martin McDonagh, cast: Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Abbie Cornish; The Place Beyond The Pines (HE), d: Derek Cianfrance, cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Rose Byrne, Ray Liotta, Eva Mendes; Only God Forgives (HE), d: Nicolas Winding Refn, cast: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Yayaying. (4)

Stand-alone: Skyfall, d: Sam Mendes, cast: Daniel Craig, Helen McCrory, Javier Bardem. (1)

Anticipated Quality, Presumed Fall-Holiday Release, No Dates: The Master (HE), d: Paul Thomas Anderson; cast: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Laura Dern; Cloud Atlas (HE), d: Wachowski Bros., Tom Tykwer; cast: Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Ben Whishaw; The Burial (a.k.a. Untitled Terrence Malick), d/w: Terrence Malick, cast: Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Jessica Chastain, Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen, Javier Bardem; Hyde Park on Hudson, d: Roger Michell, cast: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams. (4)

Harvey Keitel during shooting of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.

September 2012: Argo (9.14, HE), d: Ben Affleck, cast: Ben Affleck, Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Kerry Bishe, Kyle Chandler; Looper (9.28, HE), d: Rian Johnson, cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo; Savages (9.28, HE), d: Oliver Stone, cast: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, Demian Bichir. (3)

October 2012: The Gangster Squad (10.19, HE); d: Ruben Fleischer, cast: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone; Not Fade Away (1.19, HE), d: David Chase, cast: James Gandolfini, James Magaro, Brad Garrett, Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald; Nero Fiddled, d: Woody Allen, cast: Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Allen, Penelope Cruz, Alison Pill, Alec Baldwin, Greta Gerwig; The Impossible, d: Juan Antonio Bayona, cast: Naomi Watts, Ewan Mcgregor. (4)

No Date Yet: Anna Karenina (HE), d: Joe Wright, cast: Keira Knightley, Aaron Johnson, Michelle Dockery, Jude Law, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Watson, Olivia Williams. (1)

November 2012: The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21, HE), d: David O. Russell, cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles; Gravity (11.21, HE), d: Alfonso Cuaron; cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney. (2)

December 2012: Les Miserables (12.7, HE), d: Tom Hooper, cast: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway; Great Hope Springs (12.14), d: David Frankel , cast: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve Carell; The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12.14); Zero Dark Thirty (12.14, HE), d: Kathryn Bigelow, cast: Kyle Chandler, Joel Edgerton, Jessica Chastain, Edgar Ramirez, Mark Strong, Chris Pratt, Jason Clarke; This Is Forty (12.21, HE), d: Judd Apatow, cast: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, Megan Fox, Melissa McCarthy; World War Z (12.21), d: Marc Forster, cast: Brad Pitt; Lincoln (mid to late December, HE), d: Steven Spielberg, cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones; Django Unchained (12.25, HE), d: Quentin Tarantino, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Sacha Baron Cohen; The Great Gatsby (12.25, HE), d: Baz Luhrman, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher; Life of Pi, d: Ang Lee, cast: Tobey Maguire, Irrfan Khan, Tabu. (10)

Floaters: He Loves Me, d: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris; Fork in the Road, d: Alexander Payne; Cosmopolis, d: David Cronenberg; Amour, d: Michael Haneke; All You Need Is Love, d: Susanne Bier. (5)

Hugo Weaving, Halle Berry and director Tom Tykwer during shooting of Cloud Atlas.

In an undated but presumably recent article for some WGAW-related newsletter or whatever, director-screenwriter Nicholas Kazan recalls how Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman was nearly picked to death by well-meaning collaborators before it opened on Broadway in 1947.

"If the most successful producer of that era wanted to change the title [of Miller's play]," Kazan writes, "and if he and two of the leading directors of the time considered the play 'unproducable' and further agreed on what the problem was, and if all these 'experts' were wrong in every respect about a play regarded as...Read More

"I'm Barack Obama, and I approved this message"...gangsta!

I hung out yesterday with a little German mutt who was somewhat behind the eight ball. She came in barking, howling, scared, aggressive. All little dogs do this. So I tried to disarm things by sitting still, but she got upset whenever I got up or moved or eyeballed her. So I said "eff it" and pretended to be another dog -- panting, mock-barking, making dog noises. Then I chased her around the room in a playful way. We gradually got down to the petting and stroking and "I'm okay, you're okay" part. All was cool.

Joey is not...

I've learned that it's best to pack multiples of needed items on the theory that one or even two will be misplaced or lost or God forbid damaged before the journey ends. So I've got two Mac Powerbooks w/ cords and connectors for each, two digital cameras, four power adapters, four combs, four reading glasses, four sunglasses, four 3D glasses for glare reducation, etc. It's not a theory, actually. Somehow and some way, losses (or to be more precise mystifying vanishings) always happen on trips. No preventing this and certainly no understanding why.

I'm amazed that someone believes that Walmart-frequenting Bluray obsessives will be even slightly interested in glancing at The Barbarian and the Geisha, easily one of John Wayne's worst films ever. "Before release, the film was heavily re-edited by the studio" and "director John Huston denounced this version and even wanted to have his name removed from the credits. Huston had wanted to make a particularly Japanese film in terms of photography, pacing, color and narration but only a few edits representing his vision were left intact."

And how much better, really,...Read More

German Amazon has announced the year-end availability of a Universal/Alfred Hitchcock Bluray box set, which will street on 12.28. The titles will include Rope (meh), Rear Window (excellent!), The Man Who Knew Too Much (ditto), Torn Curtain (who cares?), The Birds (very good), Family Plot (meh), Frenzy (semi-okay), Shadow of a Doubt (excellent!), The Trouble with Harry (zzzz), Marnie (flatline), Psycho (already available), Saboteur (agreeable), Topaz (meh) and Vertigo (finally!). 14 films, 1607 minutes, 145.99 euros or 10.50 each.

Four days ago The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Roxborough posted an astute assessment of the likely favorings of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival jurors: actresses Hiam Abbass, Emmanuelle Devos and Diane Kruger, fashionista Jean Paul Gaultier, directors Alexander Payne, Andrea Arnold and Nanni Moretti, actor Ewan McGregor and documentarian and activist Raoul Peck.

I'm calling my mom later today via Skype. Skype to landline, I mean. But as usual, I'll have to ask the people at her assisted living facility to make her pick up the phone. She never answers when I call directly, and she won't call me on the cell. "Why don't you answer when I call?," I've asked. "Because I don't feel like it," she's said more than once.

Sometime around last November's Savannah Film Festival James Toback told me about a faux-documentary he was planning that would include lensing during the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. It's since been reported that Alec Baldwin, Toback's constant Savannah companion, will star as himself. Last week Forbes columnist Roger Friedman wrote that Toback's film crew "will be hitting all the big [Cannes] parties and events" starting on Wednesday, and that Neve Campbell "shot some material for Toback in New York last week."

Today will include (a) a final burst (or slog) of Berlin-based column salt-mining, (b) a final three-mile walk this afternoon, (c) figuring out a bus departure point to Berlin Tegel tomorrow morning, (d) picking up dry cleaning, (e) re-packing, and (f) enjoying the anticipation of weather that's actually warm and pleasant for a change. Expected Nice arrival Tuesday at 1:45 pm. Pick up press pass by 3:30 or 4 pm. La Pizza gathering at 7:30 pm.

The more I think about it, the more I'm resenting the Cannes Film Festival's decision to delay screening Jeff Nichols' Mud until Saturday, 5.26, at which point many if not most journos have left. That's just obstinacy, provocation for provocation's sake, etc. Publicists need to schedule a Star/Olympia screening a day or two earlier. Seriously.

A recently posted clip from Jacques Audiard's Rust & Bone, the much-anticipated 2012 Cannes Film Festival selection that costars Marion Cotillard and Matthias "big effing ape" Schoenaerts (the no-testicles Bullhead guy).

The Masters of Cinema Bluray of Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), which I ordered weeks ago, will include an "extract" from the original screenplay depicting the excised gas chamber ending, which was filmed by Wilder but removed from the final version because it was deemed too depressing and "unduly gruesome."

Consider this passage from filmsnoir.net: "In his 1998 book on film noir, More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, James Naremore offers this penetrating analysis and critique:

"The execution described in the longest version of the script greatly increases our sympathy for...Read More

"In the end, Obama had to rip off the Band-Aid and take a stand, because if his campaign depends on painting Romney as a bundle of ambiguous beliefs, the first black president can't be ambiguous himself on a civil rights issue. Not to mention that big bucks from gay backers will be needed to replace the lost bucks from alienated Wall Street donors.

"The gay community, forgiving all prevarication, was electrified. As the Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick put it on the CBS morning show, there are now little boys who can dream of both being a president and marrying a president.

"This is the only time I've been consciously trying to capture a sensation, which is that emotion of when you're a 12-year-old and you fall in love. I remember that being such a powerful feeling, it was almost like going into a fantasy world. It's stuck with me enough that I think about it still." -- Moonrise Kingdom director-cowriter Wes Anderson speaking to N.Y. Times contributor Dennis Lim in a 5.13 article called "Giving Chase To Young Love on The Run."

(l. to r.) Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton and Bruce Willis in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom....

I never pay much attention to Director's Fortnight or Critics Week selections during the Cannes Film Festival. But this year, as an exercise, I'd really like to catch one film from both programs. But what to choose? I've just spent a half-hour or so going over the lists...nothing. So I'm appealing to Guy Lodge or some Guy Lodge-y type acquaintance who can suggest a couple of must-sees that, let's face it, I'll most likely hate or be bored by.

Inbox Update: "Iranian filmmaker Massoud Bakhshi's A Respectable Family will have its world premiere at the...Read More

A homework assignment that I've been dreading due to sheer laziness has to be done -- an appraisal of Tere Tereba's "Mickey Cohen: The Life and Crimes of L.A.'s Notorious Mobster," which has been out since May 1st. It covers Cohen's entire life (9.4.13 to 7.29.76)...well, from age six on...and offers plenty of shoe-leather detail and minutiae up the wazoo.

Gangster Mickey Cohen, taken sometime in 1953.

I've seen Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans three times -- once during the initial 1992 theatrical release, an expanded edition on a DVD a few years ago and then the definitive director's cut Bluray in 2010.

The Bluray is the best version by far, but for some reason I've never managed to love Mohicans. I've always liked, admired and respected it but my heart goes out to Heat, The Insider, Collateral and Thief.

I nonetheless would have attended the special screening of the definitive director's cut at L.A.'s American Cinematheque on Friday night, if...Read More

Drunken soccer fans stumbling around prior to today's game between Dortmund BVB and Bayern Munchen. Dortmund was victorious, but I was too appalled by the alcoholic bellowing and carousing around to care.

Actual sign on Berlin street -- not a joke.

If you want a lustrous representation of Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow (1950, the first major post-WWII Western to portray Native Americans sympathetically, you must go to zee French! Their Bluray has been out since mid-April. Costarring James Stewart, Jeff Chandler (who used to wear women's underwear when he was married to Esther Wlliams), Debra Paget...and with no fascist cropping because it was made in 1950.